ZIONS FICTION A TREASURY OF ISRAELI SPECULATIVE LITERATURE EDITED BY Sheldon Teitelbaum and Emanuel Lottem FOREWORD BY Robert Silverberg AFTERWORD BY Aharon Hauptman ILLUSTRATIONS BY Avi Katz To my wife, Lilith, and kids, Adam, Shiran, and Liam, for keeping my sense of wonder afloat to my mom, Roz, whose fortitude is something to behold to my late father, Harry, and to uncles, Jack and Ben ZTL, who would have had a hoot with this, and to Grand Master Bob, who bent space and opened portals. SHELI ...

Old Venus edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois For Bob Walters and Tess Kissinger, who would love to paint the wallowing dinosaurs of swampy Venus Introduction Return to Venusport by Gardner Dozois DAWN ON VENUS: The sleek, furry heads of the web-footed amphibious Venusians break water near one of the rare archipelagos in the world-girdling ocean. Nearby, the toothy head and long, snaky neck of a Plesiosaur-like sea creature momentarily rears above the waves. Elsewhere, vast swamps ...

OSAMA By Lavie Tidhar For Elizabeth, who was there Always start with a big explosion - Mike Longshott PROLOGUE a fake Yemeni passport The Hilltop Hotel stands on Ngiriama Road in downtown Nairobi. On the busy street outside are shoe-shiners scratch-card stands taxi-drivers dusty shops selling stationary, rice, spices from Zanzibar, tinned foods and fresh tomatoes down the road a little is an Indian restaurant. Electric fans move dust around inside the low-ceilinged buildings. The Hilltop itself ...

BEWERE THE NIGHT edited by Ekaterina Sedia To those who cannot keep one shape Introduction After editing Running with the Pack, I was a tad apprehensive about taking on another shape-shifter anthology. Sure, its more than just werewolves, I reasoned, but how many variations on a theme can there be The metaphor was, to me, obvious: violence and wildness, the humans animal nature hidden by a thin civilized veneer a theme as old as storytelling. As it turned out, I should never have worried. The ...

THE YEARS BEST SCIENCE FICTION Twenty-Ninth Annual Collection Edited by Gardner Dozois Summation: 2011 Like last year, the big story in 2011 continues to be the explosion in e-book sales, which have been dramatic enough, and accrued fast enough, to make some commentators speculate that e-books will eventually drive physical print books out of existence altogether. I dont think thats going to happen anytime soon, if it ever does, but the e-book revolution has been impressive nevertheless, and ...

The Best Science Fiction Fantasy of the Year Volume 5 An anthology of stories edited by Jonathan Strahan For Alex, Alisa, and Tansythe Coode Street Feminist Advisory Committeefor their kindness, support, and advice. Acknowledgements This year has been a challenging one and getting this book done has been demanding. I doubt you would be holding it now without the determined assistance of my wife and co-editor Marianne Jablon, who stepped up to the plate and helped get this book ready at the last ...

Naked City: Tales of Urban Fantasy An anthology of stories edited by Ellen Datlow For my parents, Doris and Nathan Datlow, whom I love dearly and who infected me with their love for reading. Introduction The term urban fantasy was originally applied to fantasy written in reaction to the works most popular up to the early 1980shigh-fantasy, imaginary worlds with medieval trappings. Instead, some writers began to inject magic into contemporary times and into urban areas, both real and invented. ...